This post is made up of sentences and excerpts from a blog that I know pretty well; thought it’d be a good idea to share some of the decent lines here. I’m probably splitting it up into a few parts because there are too many of them.

“A commonly visited leisure spot once upon a time has turned into a deserted playground of broken swings.”

“I’ll wait, til the day is mine.”

“There are days when you feel punched out, and today’s one of them.”

“It’s not a monologue.. it’s just a dialogue without response.”

“Behind every cynical person is a sad story unbeknownst to others.”

“Crack lines; try as you might to fix them, they’ll always be there somewhere.”

“The moment before I fall asleep is the happiest moment of the day; it is as though dreams have merged with reality. I feel alive and awake, but live a dream and a fantasy.”

“Accept and like a person not for what he is, but for who he is.”

“It’s like… after a person has made a wrong choice, you should let him choose again so that he is more clear about what he wants and will this time, make the right decision and appreciate the right decision so much more and never allow himself to decide or choose wrongly again.”

“There’s a reason why you should run after the bus, and not be lazy and convince yourself you won’t be able to catch it.”

Advice can come in all forms of shapes and sizes, and from anyone at anytime. It can come from your mum when needed most (“Just follow your heart sweetheart, everything is going to be okay”), or it can come unwelcomed from a rival (“Why don’t you learn how to dress for success even a little like me?”)

Given the assumed constructive nature of an advice, most are friendly and designed to improve a situation or an individual, be it in influencing a decision or how to do things better. Friends advice each other all the time when things look a little dry for the other, and the Internet is full of people writing advisory articles in forum pages and websites.

The irony however, is this: we often tend to take the advice given by strangers or random sources more seriously than those given to us by our families and close friends. This is a weird phenomena, but it’s true for a large part of us. Take for example when we’re young: When our mums tell us to eat our vegetables, we tend to shrug it off but when we read up on the advices online on the importance of vegetables to our diet, or when we see our friends or crush enjoying their greens and egging us to eat them, we start to appreciate and consume them.

How different is it from when your mum nicely tells you to eat your veggies at dinner time? Not much really, the vegetables still taste about the same.

There’s something strange about this really, that we choose to ignore or neglect the advice of those who know us best, and those who want the best for us. Perhaps it is taking for granted the goodwill that our loved ones have for us, or maybe we seek to learn only from experiencing it for ourselves. The hard way, if you ask me.

It would probably be good if we learn to take advice for us more seriously, and give them a thought before throwing them away into the mental garbage bin at the back of our heads. We should of course have a mind and an opinion of our own, but we could always use for a different (perhaps previously hidden) perspective in a situation. We may think we know better, but sometimes.. we really don’t.

(P.S another irony of advice is that we often give them to people like they are free, but use them ourselves as though it’d cost us a new car or apartment, but thats to be saved for another day. Haha.)